Michael Wollny Trio breeches the wall at Montpellier

How lucky to be in Montpellier at the same time as the Michael Wollny Trio and catch them live for the first time. German pianist Wollny and his brilliant colleagues Christian Weber, double bass, and Eric Schaefer, drums, produced nearly an hour-and-a-half of delicious suspense and excitement under the night sky in the open air amphitheatre, perhaps a perfect setting for an artist whose last album was called Nachtfahrten.

Tonight’s journey was one of contrasting dynamics. There were long crescendos played at breakneck speed, bursting with ideas and risk-taking. There were also totally absorbing meditative passages with Wollny’s superb articulation dropping individual notes which momentarily hung in the night air.

Woolny’s physicality was a magnet too, knees jerking, feet twitching and, by the end, drenched in perspiration. Both Wollny and Weber had sheet music, and the set included pieces by Alban Berg, Guillaume de Machault and Paul Hindemith, but the exchange of glances and interplay between the trio members suggested much was being created in the moment.

This was one of a series of jazz concerts in the annual Montpellier/Radio France music festival. In introducing the live broadcast, Radio France’s Pascal Rozat suggested that there’s a wall between the German and French jazz scenes, with musicians from the former country rarely playing in France and vice versa. If so, Wollny didn’t so much take a brick out of it as make a massive breech before striding through. The French audience responded with cheers and a standing ovation.

– Colin May

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